gendao

David has spent time in old Europe with Orthodox Christian mystics that make some of his masters in China look like beginners.

This quote caught my eye, though. After hearing stories of Wang Liping walking through walls and "daylight ascensions," you're saying that there are Orthodox Christian mystics who make these feats look like child's play?

Um, could you elaborate? What exact Christian traditions are these guys practicing and what have they achieved in comparison? And why isn't David discipling under them instead of WLP then?

And who actually does that?

After which he used yogic asanas and TCM meridian theory to verify his independent findings.

Oops, bad example...or is that a good one?

But think about that - you had millions of yoga students following gurus...and yet none of them (I don't think) had figured out that you're supposed to contract, not relax, the muscles being stretched. Why? Because they were following the finger, not the moon. And that very slight, subtle distinction can make all the difference in the world.

This is ungrounded in my oppinion... if I pour a glass of water on you - you get wet, I dont...

 

I know deeper down there is an implicit connection, but that's deeper down not here on the surface... I know some people can be deeper down and on the surface and higher up at the same time - but I cant, so it wouldn't serve me to talk of that...

Kinda like how we still use Newtonian physics for most science and engineering calculations - even though we know relativistic physics is technically more accurate. But for our purposes, Newtonian physics suffices and is far easier to apply.

So sure, focus inside...but don't just strictly LIMIT yourself to JUST THAT as some ironclad rule. Or at least that's my opinion...

Well also don't forget - let's not get too stuck in this paradigm of "in me" vs "out of me" or "myself" vs "not myself."

If we are ultimately all connected as one, then everything is really "in me."

Although until we achieve enlightenment and really unite with everything, our current paradigm is still probably a better approximation for the time being.

What is the "state of Sung?"

I think ideally you want a good balance between self-discovery and experienced guidance. Isn't this true in most disciplines and skills in life?

But I would agree with perhaps your sentiment that people may tend to rely upon gurus too much. I've noticed that those who follow the finger instead of the moon never get that far in the end.

I think you must still find your own way, with teachers as signposts and teachings as verification.

Sexism is the exploitation of one sex by another, as racism is the exploitation of one race by another.

The reality today is as in Pietro's well-linked post. If anything, women aren't getting exploited nearly as much as men are these days...

Is it possible to separate practice from personality conflicts?

I think the former quickly became a convenient proxy to hash out underlying disputes about the latter.

That's fine, maybe it was even therapeutic and sorely needed!

But, there's no need to confuse apples with oranges, then.

In short: Don't claim to be debating apples when you are really debating oranges.

This thread really could have been split up into 2:

1) Debating the LSD practice and protocol itself.

2) Airing out personal gripes between various posters in this thread.

Anyhow, I guess real life tends to get messier than that...but I'm glad people were able to get some stuff off their chests and reach some sort of conciliation in the end.

And hey, let's be honest - who doesn't love watching a trainwreck? Certainly not the >4000 views this flame war got!

There is something very odd here. I just borrowed a copy of The Silk Road by Susan Whitfield because there is a short chapter about Tibetan syncretism of Chan Buddhism & Vajrayana Yoga in the Dunhuang scrolls. This includes some specific methodology on meditation and mention of sexual practice.

How odd that someone else randomly makes a Dunhuang post today!

What type of Chinese do they speak at-

 

1-Shaolin

2-Chen Village

3-Beijng

4-Taiwan

5-Wudang monastery

other places you can think of too.

Cantonese is only spoken in Guangdong (Canton) - which as you can see is far to the south...

1 & 2 are both in Henan Province. They do not speak Cantonese here, but closer to Mandarin.

3 - They speak Beijing dialect here - which is basically Mandarin with a slurring at the end.

4 - They speak pretty proper Mandarin here.

5 is just south of Henan in Hubei. So, I'm guessing not too different than at 1 & 2.

Now, what this guy did here goes against EVERYTHING women and feminism have taught as as men:

we were all sitting down at this small table and there were no more chairs left i got up to make a phone call and she took my spot when i came back she had left and I took my chair back, she then tells me in a ***** voice

 

she8: "hey you took my chair"!

me : and wat u want me to do ?

she8: "I want my chair back "

me :"well there is a chair at that other table(other chair must of been like 7 feet away and must of weight like 30 pounds)

why don't you go get it because am not leaving my spot "

she8: your an *******

me : oh well am still not leaving my spot

 

she8like 20 minutes later she pulls the chair closer to me and introduces her self)" hi wats your name?"

me : my name is _____ wats your name ?

she8: my name is april

me: well nice to meet you april

she8: hey can i tell you something ?

me:yeah wats up

she8: hey i really liked the way you told me to get that chair , I really like a man who is in charge , because any other guy would just gave me their chair but you told me to f*** off in a way and I really liked that

mespeechless)

she8:hey do you like to smoke?

me:yes

she8: well hey I would love to hang out with you and smoke out.I would ask for your number but i forgot my cell phone but heres my phone number.###-###-####

mek ill ttyl and boom I left with my friend.

 

the best part is the number wasn't a fake so I smoked out with her and had sex like 2 days later

Nature is sexist. It created us different with different class strengths and weaknesses. We are not androgynous by birth and gender is not merely a social construct. Humans need to get over it and embrace our TRUE natures. Men need to be strong enough for women to withstand all their shyt-tests. 'What you can't say no to has power over you.' So if a man never says no to a woman - he's showing that she has power over him - which is a turn-off to both.

This seems common sense but in our feminist counter-culture, the obvious truth has been made taboo and replaced by groupthink falsehood. Truth is, "feminism" has become a sugar-coated pseudonym for misandry, female supremacy, anti-femininity, closet masculinism, penis envy, lesbianism & androgyny. And very often, the projection of personal issues and the scapegoating for one's personal problems onto men.

Although I also wonder why there seem to be so many MRA/PUAs in here? Are we seeking a lost masculinity in an ancient art? Or has masculinism simply become so widespread everywhere lately?

All prenatal procedures common today -- ultrasonic diagnostics, epidurals, hormonal interventions during pregnancy and labor, etc. -- interfere with jing. A male child of a woman who has received a course of female hormones during pregnancy (something often done to prevent a spontaneous abortion) may fail to identify himself as distinctly male later in life, and will believe, e.g., that being gay is something natural for him, and indeed it will be, in the sense that the "choice" has been made prenatally... but because it came in fact from a pill bottle given to his pregnant mother, it's not, strictly speaking, quite as natural as if the pill bottle was absent from the picture. This is jing territory encroaching on one's future qi-shen territory. It happens a lot these days, and more with more mindless erratic man-made interventions into nature. I'd say our power over that 20% of space-time events we are theoretically capable of controlling and shaping is shrinking with every new and "improved" generation.

Anyhow, some GREAT points in there! And in related news...

Season of conception tied to school performance

Tue May 8, 2:19 PM ET

 

The time of year a woman conceives may influence the future academic performance of her child, according to research reported this week at the Pediatric Academic Societies' annual meeting.

 

When researchers linked standardized test scores of 1,667,391 Indiana students in grades 3 through 10 with the month in which each student had been conceived, they found that children conceived May through August scored significantly lower on math and language tests than children conceived during other months of the year.

 

The correlation between test scores and conception season held regardless of race, gender, and grade level.

 

Why might this be? According to Dr. Paul Winchester of Indiana University School of Medicine who led the study, says the evidence points to environmental pesticides, used most often in the summer months, as a possible player.

 

The lower test scores correlated with higher levels of pesticides and nitrates in the surface water (nearby streams and other bodies of water) during that same time period, he told Reuters Health.

 

"Exposure to pesticides and nitrates can alter the hormonal milieu of the pregnant mother and the developing fetal brain," Winchester explained in a statement. For example, past research has linked exposure to pesticides and nitrates to low thyroid hormone levels ("hypothyroidism") in pregnant women and hypothyroidism in pregnancy has been tied to lower intelligence test scores in offspring.

 

While the current findings do not prove that pesticides and nitrates contribute to lower test scores, "they strongly support such a hypothesis," Winchester said.

 

"A priori there should be no reasons particularly why the month of conception should change your (test) scores," he added in an interview, "and yet from our chain of evidence our hypothesis was that if pesticides do alter the friendly environment of the developing fetus than that might be reflected in lower scores. And unfortunately that's what we found."

 

"There is something going on" and it needs to be studied further, Winchester concluded.

I studied with a Grand Master in the HungGar tradition of shaolin. We were not allowed to teach or study outside of the system, but we also paid NO MONEY to become "inner desciples" and learn some amazing things. We painted his house, schleped what ever was needed by him, we even chipped in and I bought a lions' head in Hong Kong and a huge drum to ship it in - that became the pride of our system the next New Year's celebration, and beyond.

again when there is limitless amount of information, human relationships hold far more value...

I think we all need to get more in touch with our inner warrior. In a non-violent way of course. This God Damn PC world view we are transitioning into is basically the castration of the American male. It's reflected in most popular TV shows where Dads are always the buttheads who fuck everything up. Robert Bly talks about this in his writing which I recommend to every man over thirty who has kids. His book called 'Iron John' is groundbreaking. He like the deviant Joseph Cambell... in a good way.

I have actually been studying the feminization and disempowerment of American men over the past generation quite a bit lately and it can indeed be maddening when you realize its enormous extent and impact. And it needs to be reversed for the sake of men as well as the health of this country. But that's a whole 'nother topic here that deserves its own thread.

Although perhaps a relevant question here is how to deal with your anger honestly without suppressing it? "John Chang" said your emotions are really important. So, how do we reduce the amount of "negative" emotions we feel? Try to prevent them or vent them out?

Anyhow, I guess I don't really know if you guys think straightening the spine is important or not, but I do at this point so it doesn't really matter either way to me at the moment.

In any case, this practice is not one size fits all. It requires life commitment and a most serious approach if any success is expected to happen. Most people are just content to play with techniques and energy. This is a perfectly fine approach, it just takes a greater understanding and level of seriousness to achieve anything close to awakening or enlightenment, concepts that get tossed around all to lightly as 'Matters of Curiousity.'

Extraordinary results require extraordinary effort...

Levitating and walking through walls are truly extraordinary and amazing!

But so are the efforts required to reach that. I mean, I find the ability to give up the paper/puzzy-chase and dedicate your whole life to the pursuit of one otherworldy goal - amazing. Or to sit in meditation for 30 days. Or, just to meditate for 8 hrs/day for 10 years! Or just to go 4 months without jizzing? Honestly, these are not "paranormal" or physically impossible, but perhaps not THAT much less amazing and almost "superhuman" in terms of real life difficulty.

Anyhow, I will say that for me, vidiami's re-cap did do some good for verification purposes. I am not following the same method by far but am apparently striving for the same very basic foundational goals. Or maybe that's a gross misinterpretation, but again as I am not following that method anyways it doesn't matter. Just saying, the "karma" here may not be all as entirely bad as you might fear...

I think mature people here take everything with a grain of salt and are their own judge, as Buddha advised. This includes technical advice, gossip, etc etc. If anyone blindly accepts everything they read on the net with zero critical thinking - hey I have a bridge in Brooklyn...

Good points everyone...yes, it may be very likely that the highest master is well-secluded and unknown to us.

And I dunno about Chia - he talks a lot, but "words don't prove words, WORKS prove words." So, what has he actually achieved that has proven any of what he preaches? Is he in extraordinary health? Can he do some qi tricks or heal? I don't know, but the way that I saw him ramble on in one video - it didn't seem like he had much of detailed substance to say? And I've certainly met qigong-type people who seemed far more accomplished and advanced in person.

But that Nasrudin character is hilarious!

Actually, speech and knowledge isn't free in the West either - it gets copyrighted and must be paid for.

It's really probably technically more free in China...but only to those deemed worthy of receiving it (based upon ming, yuan fen, 德, etc.).

So, I can respect conditional terms that were initially agreed to.

Anyhow, the upsides of having a guru are all obvious...expert guidance, safety, etc. etc.

But the downsides are that you don't OWN your information - they do. And so you can't simply do with it what you want. You are borrowing, not owning.

The great thing about self-discovery is that you OWN your whole experience. You can talk about it as freely as you wish or don't wish. You can charge for it or dole it out for free. To whoever you want. And you don't have to worry about describing it wrongly, because you are the judge. YOU know what you are trying to say. And you can explore and deviate more from it at will. Real intellectual freedom.

Not to mention, I find that when I self-discover things I often fill in some blanks that were missing from the orthodox dogma. A great example of this is Bob Cooley's resistance stretching where he discovered that contracting (not relaxing) the muscle being stretched made all the difference in the world! And this was really key to making yoga work - yet I've never heard it being taught in yoga.

There's a real subtle difference between following the Tao and following a finger pointing at the Tao. And yet it is one of those key differences that separates entire paradigms. Ideally, I would like to rely primarily upon self-discovery but using advanced masters to periodically keep me on track and their teachings as verification for what I have already accomplished. I don't think I do well with paint-by-numbers methods. But there's an optimum balance there somewhere.

Here's something for your shrink; my ego was crushed, demolished and disintegrated.

Want to be taught empathy? Be made weak.

Want to be taught compassion? Be made persecuted.

Want to be taught less egoness? Have your life fall apart.

I learned these lessons early in life myself, lol.

Buddha wasn't talking about transitory, fleeting happiness that comes from gain, fame and pleasure seeking. He was talkiing about the transedent happiness of enlightenment. The sutras are all there for people to read and they haven't changed for thousands of years.

But here is where we also reach the limitations of language.

"Happiness" - as it is commonly understood to unenlightened masses (including myself) - would be a fleeting type coming from some type of personal fulfillment in life. Some sort of emotional high on the rollercoaster of life. A peak that cannot be sustained as it is like a frequency wave - if it were flatlined it wouldn't be a wave anymore.

The transcendent feeling gained from enlightenment is obviously something a little different and not experienced by most - so how can we really call it the same word?

Well, for general purposes, we can...

But if you really want to get technical and make subtle (but key) distinctions, it's probably not quite the same thing. At least I wouldn't just assume so...having not gotten there yet myself.

It goes back to mastering your paradigm by refining the dogma, or transcending your paradigm by questioning your assumptions. Where even the smallest re-assumption can create a whole paradigm shift. I mean, when people thought the Earth was flat, they probably didn't notice the almost imperceptibly slight curvature to the horizon. But that slight curvature made all the difference in "the world," didn't it?

Therefore, we must remember to acknowledge the limits to the precision of our language and thus dogma and original intent.

I am not saying you are wrong or right - simply that I personally don't know right now due to limits in linguistic precision and my own lack of enlightenment.

Your writing has already, I'm sure, been download and will be spread throughout cyberspace as the definitive teaching of David Shen. What's more, even though your general description is too vague to practice from, dozens of young 'Taoist Masters' will be practicing this 'method' convinced that they can make a workable practice from the outline you provided. Sadly, they will just be deluding themselves and wasting their time and energy.

 

Nothing good can come from this.

Nor do I feel like I have a "workable practice" from his brief outline.

And let's be honest - this site is far from mainstream and I rarely see over 5 people logged in at a time. The number of regular posters here seems to be about a dozen at most - with most in at least their 30s (and assumedly more mature, then).

Some cultures believe the circumstances you are conceived in have something to do with it, for example how much love/passion the parents had or if you were conceived during a thunderstorm or some other adverse condition, etc.

T

What their mood, emotions and strength of orgasm was at time of conception. Or perhaps weather or time of day, too? Perhaps these could all influence the child's qi?

I guess ideally you might want 2 people deeply in "love" having really passionate sex and within a feng shui-correct time/place, lol. Hmm, I wonder...

Chris Angel lifting up car, no tricks (that I could see) just cold training mind and body.

I don't know about that particular trick, but most of Chris Angel's tricks have been performed by other magicians. In fact, most of them all perform the same old basic tricks, just with different variations.

The art is not in the trick itself, but in the presentation. Sort of like WWF.

Daoism is just another 'way' to transend the paradigm. First comes enlightenment and then comes equinimity. You can't skip to the good part, sorry.

 

There is a subtle distinction here, the Buddha advised against 'chasing' happiness. He said the way to 'true happiness' is to eliminate craving for happiness. He didn't say happiness is overrated, quite the opposite actually. The Buddha wants you to be happy, this is very clear. And actually he did say we can have lasting happiness, he said this our natural state.

You don't arrive at the end by thinking you can just start there and skip all the work. You can do the work many ways and different means will suit different people, but it's still work either way.

And I agree that chasing happiness is clinging to the paradigm, not transcending it.

But did Buddha really want us to all be happy, peaceful or what, though? Without reading his actual quotes, original texts or intent, I can't really comment further on this. To me, happiness just seems more of an ego-based rollercoaster emotion. Whereas peace seems to be an intellectual state based upon knowing how everything is somehow fair, just and with reason. But a lot of this is fuzzy semantics, so mileage may vary...

Rumors of my poor ending have been somewhat exaggerated. I've just been working on my education. These things take time.

I wrote a couple of books on Taoist practices and one on Taoism and Magick.

The road to immortality can take many unexpected twists and turns. The teachings I followed told me that in order to reach my higher goals I would have to give up everything. How could I comprehend beforehand what this could possibly mean? I found out. It was beyond my wildest dreams or nightmares. But I don't want to discuss it. Leave it to say that I'm still here; healthy, wealthy and reasonably well adjusted for a TaoBum.

 

Hello Friends,

Eric Yudelove

Soooo, was whatever you had to give up essentially your personal power in this world?

I don't expect you to answer that, but you just got the shrink in me irresistably curious...

Anyhow, glad to hear you're doing ok now, cheers!

Actually, I believe the point of Buddhism (enlightenment, per se) is transcending the paradigm.

Happiness and suffering as we know it are a duality.

You cannot have one without the other.

So, if you want to escape one, you must escape both.

This requires transcending this whole paradigm itself.

As long as you are stubbornly stuck in that base paradigm (duality), you will seek ego-based happiness and avoid suffering.

But perhaps in the next one, you might seek understanding and peace-of-mind instead. Whereby happiness and suffering then lose their meaning. After all, if you really understand why things are, what is there to be happy or miserable about?

It is as Cameron alluded to in post #43...

Small advancements are made by refining and mastering your paradigm.

But big advancements require transcending your paradigm.

We see this in all arts, sciences and every level of life.

When people thought the Earth was flat, I'm sure they had these same debates about whether expeditions would fall off the edges or not. Lots of conflict - and conflicts that could never be solved until that paradigm itself was transcended. And once it was, those false conflicts instantly disappeared.

Ah..."enlightenment!"